Two classroom management challenges came up recently in my engineering classes. In the first, two friends were horsing around and did some minor, easy to fix damage to their projects. Each claimed the other had started it. In the second,
Read More
The Preparation Gap
There are many factors that are impacting education, to include lack of funding, lack of teaching professionals in the classroom, and the lack of support for new professionals during the most crucial years. As a Hope Street Group National Teacher
Read MoreWho is driving the bus?
Do you get on or do you get left behind? Well, it depends on who is driving the bus? Have you ever sat in a professional development and thought “Why on earth am I here?” or “Could the rest of
Read More
Rookie Moves
Now that I’ve returned to the classroom, people keep asking: “How is it going?” And my answer has been pretty consistent: it’s wonderful, but it’s also kicking my proverbial rear end! It’s not like I forgot how complicated teaching was,
Read More
Defeat Doesn’t Live Here
Defeat. I think of this word and I think pain, rejection, frustration, and FAILURE. As I grow as a teacher leader there are times when I could let defeat consume and define me. As educators we experience highs and lows,
Read More
Why Do I Teach?
On the third day of school I asked students, “Besides money, what is the one thing that you personally have to get from a job?” I thought it was a good question to begin our unit on career explorations. I
Read MoreImportant but Misrepresented?
I had every intention of writing about back to school, a theme that is being beautifully discussed by my fellow bloggers at Stories from School. But then a proverbial bomb was dropped on the world of professional development in the form
Read More
Teacher Eval: Liberace or the Kid Next Door?
A quality evaluation is a beginning; a useless one, an end. That’s the conclusion I draw from a quote by the legendary Madeline Hunter in a recent Ed Week article by David Finley: “If you hear someone playing the piano,
Read More